I Love Dick (10 page)

Sylvère and I bought this house from a young couple of Jehovah's Witnesses. He'd inherited it from his parents, Long Islanders who bought it as a hunting camp. No one here remembers them and I doubt Sylvère and I will leave much imprint either.

Dick, I've never been much of a journal writer, but it's been so easy to write to you. All I want is that you should know me, or know a little about what I'm thinking, seeing. “And the moon of my heart is shining forth,” a Japanese courtesan named Lady Nijo wrote at the end of her confessions. I've never thought writing could be such a direct communication but you're a perfect listener. My silent partner, listening so long as I stay on track and tell you what is really on my mind. I don't need any encouragement, approval or response as long as you are listening.

Tonight I read a strange and creepy book about Elaine and Willem de Kooning. Really it's a portrait of a period that believed in the utter worthlessness of women—“art tarts” and a few “girl artists” all orbiting around the big Dicks. Put it together with
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A Secret History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
and it's impossible to understand how we got from there to here. Stranger than the fall of the Gang of Four after the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

I'll close for now,

Love,
Chris

For Christmas, Tad gave Chris a diary: a blank book with Edward Hopper's picture of a tough young woman in a straw hat and flimsy dress leaning up against a pillar on the cover. Looking for trouble?

Chris walked along Mud Street Christmas morning past Josh Baker's trailer wondering if she could describe this place to Dick as well as David Rattray wrote about East Hampton. Could Dick even understand her feelings about Thurman? It was different from his Wild West adventure because she'd lived here, taught school, knew half the town and could never float above the surface of it.

That night she was invited to spend Christmas with her friend Shawna's family in New Jersey. She drove down alone, experiencing every blurry alteration in the landscape with a chill. That night she sat up late in the living room writing her first diary entry. Impossible to write alone. The diary begins: Dear Dick.

Somewhere on the trip across America she'd made a promise (to herself? to Dick?) to write him every day whether she felt like it or not. In the vast scheme of human effort, this wasn't much to do. (As a teenager she'd gotten through rough visits to the dentist by thinking about the bravery of China's poor and lower middle peasants.)

William, Shawna's dad had just come back from Guatemala with a Quaker group. After Christmas dinner the family gathered round to hear highlights of the torture testimonies he'd recorded. These tapes got her thinking. The testimonies, though they recounted incredible atrocity, were uniformly clear and undigressive—as if each speaker were somehow part of a larger person. Was it the unifying force of narrative? Was it because all the speakers belonged to the same rural Indian community? Chris was not a torture victim, not a peasant. She was an American artist, and for the first time it occurred to her that perhaps the only thing she had to offer was her specificity. By writing Dick she was offering her life as Case Study.

Shawna's husband Jack was such an asshole. William was recounting his brief meeting with the American activist Jennifer Harbury, who'd gone on a hunger strike and chained herself to the steps of the American embassy in Guatemala City. Shawna and Chris were awestruck. “Excuse me, Bill,” Jack oozed. “Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Jennifer a Harvard educated lawyer?” He was speaking in the same seductive gravelly voice, reeking of sincerity, that he used on frightened actresses. “I mean, she comes from bucks. And don't you think if Jennifer really cared about her husband she would've found a quarter million to throw at El Capitano? Isn't that how it works down there? If she wanted him released she wouldn't've made this public scene…” Jack Berman obviously was an expert on what constitutes a Virtuous Woman. Someone who keeps her mouth shut and respects the rules of “privacy.” Jack's five ex-wives were all paragons of virtue. Bill was stumped and Chris, for once, was virtuous because she didn't want to ruin Christmas.

December 26, 1994

On Monday Chris drives to JFK to meet Sylvère's plane from Paris. Their plan is to go from JFK to their other (rented) house in East Hampton, deal with a basement flooding problem, pick up some books Sylvère needs for the semester and then drive back to Thurman where they'll spend the rest of Christmas Break. The plane's due in at 7:30 but they don't leave the airport 'til much later because Chris arrives 10 minutes late, Sylvère wanders off to find her and they circle around the terminal looking for each other for two hours. They fight about this all the way to Riverhead. Exhausted around midnight they settle into the Greenport Waterfront Inn motel (off season rates). For the first time since leaving California Chris fails to write to Dick. She and Sylvère still seem 4,000 miles apart; the distance drains her. But finally when Sylvère takes off his clothes they're back on common ground: he's wearing a homemade moneybelt stuffed with hundred dollar bills that his mother, a retired furrier, sewed on the eve of his departure. By June they hoped to pay down their most expensive mortgage. They count out the money on the bed—25 fresh one hundreds—they're thrilled! They'd only been expecting 20.

And then they made love twice, Chris told Dick the next morning when she finally wrote her letter. Sylvère wanted to collaborate on details but Chris wanted to tell Dick about other stuff, about her visits with her girlfriends Ann and Shawna.

“Dick,” she wrote after sending Sylvère out for coffee, “this house business is so absorbing I wonder when I'm ever going to get back to the tedium and humiliation of the movie. I guess I will. Would it be enough to write to you? Yes, I don't know, maybe—”

Maybe she told Sylvère how estranged she felt or maybe he sensed it. Because the next day, December 28, against his better judgment, Sylvère found a way of inserting himself back into the story.

EXHIBIT L:   A VISIT TO SYLVÈRE AND DICK'S MUTUAL FRIENDS BRUCE AND BETSEY

Bruce & Betsey's Guest Room

Mount Tremper, New York

Wednesday, December 28, 1994: 12 a.m.

Dear Dick,

Well the house was a disaster and I was too tired to write to you after 12 hours siphoning floodwater out of the cellar, then packing-shopping-driving. We'd meant to drive straight through to Thurman but we started talking about you in the car and Sylvère had this idea that maybe we could stop and visit your friends Bruce and Betsey in Mt. Tremper. I mean, they're sort of his friends too (though if they find out about these letters, they won't be). It seemed so outrageous and farfetched, but when Sylvère called Bruce from a pay phone he said, “Of course! You'll spend the night!”

Next Morning:

It's 7:45, Sylvère's gone to get some coffee and I'm writing here in bed under a pile of wooly blankets. In fact it's beautiful: a maple tree, a frozen river, woods and winter chickadees seen through warpy glass French windows. Twenty years ago the place would've been an ideal setting for group acid trips.

Sylvère tried so hard last night to bring you into a final gasping conversation. The visit up 'til then had been so bourgeois and impersonal…shared platitudes about country houses, academic life, the advantages and disadvantages of commuting. Just as we were heading up to bed Sylvère had the nerve to pop the question: What did Bruce and Betsey think of you? Betsey remembered something smart you'd said: I don't believe in the evil of banality but I believe in the banality of evil. What's Dick got to do with Hannah Arendt? I wondered, while Betsey and Sylvère speculated on the banality you've embraced since moving to California. Sylvère gave the usual rap about America's mythic hold on Europeans—why doesn't he extend himself to you? He sounds so glib. “All my life,” you said, “I've thought about moving to the desert”; and “The nihilism beneath things here is terrifying.” Anyway Dick I like you so much better than these people. Bruce asks questions but never listens to the answers. Betsey
blathers on to fill the void. She looks a little like the model Rachel Hunter: thin and busty, flat ass and masses of great hair, she's read everything Bruce's read but he has the career. Do you find these people charming Dick? Bruce looks even older than Sylvère, the two of them remind me of the kind of aging rock & roller/supermodel couple you see around East Hampton—kind of dumb and self-absorbed. I don't know why I dislike them so much, Dick. But I do. I guess I'm disappointed? After all, Sylvère and I came here on a mission, and that mission was to be close to you.

I never told you about last night at Claire and David's. David said the most subtle and intelligent thing about Arnold Schoenberg: When the form's in place, everything within it can be pure feeling. It's true of them as much as of atonal music. They are the perfect hosts from a world I've only read about, where having dinner is a kind of temporal art. They're so cultured and intelligent, not nasty-smart but still provocative, drawing people out so that by the time the coffee's served you feel like something has—occurred.

But now it's time to get up and make one last effort here with Bruce and Betsey.

Love,
Chris

Thurman, NY

Friday, December 30, 1994: 10 a.m.

Dear Dick,

Sylvère has taken Mimi to the vet & I'm alone & want to bring you up to date on what happened yesterday at Bruce and Betsey's.

Things got better. Betsey and I made pancakes while Sylvère and Bruce talked Marcel Mauss and Durkheim. Betsey's studying to be a curator and we talked about her work. She's already quite professional because she was careful not to commit herself by expressing any interest in my work. And then we ate and took a walk along the river. Outside the house Betsey and Bruce seemed more relaxed. Four deer ran across the towpath. We froze. I started liking them.

Then we walked over to another, 19th-century house that Bruce and Betsey bought at auction after it'd been repossessed. They joked about the pathetic former owner, a chainsmoking 50-year-old spinster who lived alone and made a living as a “commercial writer.” Of course I identified immediately. Betsey'd more or less cleared out the mess except for a few crateloads of trashy paperback romances. How odd. Perhaps these were books the “commercial writer” wrote? At any rate, Sylvère and I were ecstatic. Didn't their titles perfectly describe my feelings? We'd found the missing clue.

Here are the titles of some books we took from Bruce and Betsey's:

Second Chance At Love—Halfway There

Second Chance At Love—Passion's Song

Second Chance At Love—A Reckless Longing

Research Into Marriage

Wife In Exchange

Beyond Her Control

All Else Confusion

Bruce and Betsey seemed puzzled and bemused but I don't think they connected it with you. On the car ride home I started reading
Research Into Marriage
, then underlining, footnoting and annotating all the passages that could relate to me and you. It's an exercise both adolescent (me!) and academic (you!)…my first art object, which I'll give you as a present.

Later when I asked Sylvère why we like you so much better than Bruce and Betsey, he said: Because Dick is sensitive. I think that's true. Bruce and Betsey are undeserving of your loyalty.

Dick, all the work in the house is going to start this afternoon, so I'd better get ready for it. But I keep you in my heart, it keeps me going.

Love,
Chris